As I type, I'm staring at my bowl of spaghetti sauce and Italian turkey sausage wishing I could just scarf it down. It's not exactly getting any earlier in the day, after all. I'm also wishing there were pasta in the bowl, but that's a column for another day.
Instead, I'm eating little bites at a time, holding back dry heaves because I have to eat something.
Why? You ask? Because I'm convinced somewhere in my subconscious is an inclination to torture myself.
We always hear about the importance of nutrition. Well, I'm your living, breathing example of how important it is.
Here is how my day went:
I didn't eat breakfast because I was in a hurry. And for no particular reason, either. I just wanted that extra half hour of sleep. Here's the problem. Today, I had a 7-mile run scheduled. Wednesdays are my mid-distance run. The second most important day to fuel up properly.
For lunch, which I ate at 2 p.m., I had a small salad of mixed greens and grilled chicken. I threw some Bleu cheese and cherries in it for added flavor. But even with the added flavor, that salad couldn't have been more than 300 calories.
The math is simple: 300 calories is not enough for a person normally, let alone ahead of a 7-mile run. I was destined to crash. I just thought I wouldn't.
According to my watch, I burned 845 calories. I have a heart rate monitor so that is definitely accurate.
My basal metabolic rate is about 1346.4 (And I don't sleep all day so my educated guess of calories I burn daily without exercise is around 1500). Add the 845 I burned while running. I needed to eat 2,191 calories minimum. I ate 300. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that was just stupid on my part.
The outcome? I ran just fine, but I knew something was wrong when I bent down to touch my toes and became immediately lightheaded. My body was basically eating itself so the muscles I had just fatigued turned on me, making it harder to walk up stairs without tripping. I got dry heaves and had to lie down twice while making dinner. My stomach was so upset that I stopped eating my spaghetti sauce about the time I was typing how my day went. My body is still in a huge caloric deficit and there's nothing i can do about it.
Now, I have a headache and I want to sleep. But while I'm sitting here feeling sorry for myself for something I chose to do, there are cancer patients around the world feeling a heck of a lot worse - and they didn't ask for it.
The amazing thing about running for the American Cancer Society is I get reminders of how lucky I am to be healthy and active. Not everyone is so lucky, so I run for them while raising funds for the live-saving mission of ACS.
Click here to make a donation and join the fight.
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